Two of UK's leading fertility specialists clashed at the High Court last week in a landmark case in which a woman is seeking damages to pay for a surrogate birth. Forty-six year old Patricia Briody is claiming compensation from Helens & Knowsley Health Authority over a medical blunder that left her...
Visitors to the body zone in London's Millennium Dome will be able to see a computer animation showing a womb's-eye view of human sperm racing to fertilise an egg. The 45-second film has taken more than three months of painstaking computer animation by the British company Framestore which made...
Two babies have made legal history by becoming the first British babies to be registered as having two fathers and no mother. Aspen Drewitt-Barlow and twin sister Saffron were born in California last Thursday to their gay parents, Barrie Drewitt and Tony Barlow. The Chelmsford couple who have been together...
American geneticists announced last week that they may be close to finding the minimum number of genes necessary for an organism to survive and reproduce. Reporting in the journal Science, the researchers involved in the 2-year Minimal Genome Project intend to remove all the original DNA from a single-celled...
Gene therapy is becoming a realistic treatment for a number of disorders. At the meeting of the American Society for Haematology in New Orleans, advances in gene therapy for two disorders were reported. These were X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) and haemophilia B. In SCID, affected individuals have virtually no...
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Is surrogacy becoming normal?
by Juliet Tizzard
There's a case currently being heard in the English High Court which may have a revolutionary impact upon assisted reproduction. Margaret Briody is seeking damages of £200,000 in order, amongst other things, to pay for a surrogate mother to carry a child for her. Because of negligent medical care at...